Critical Review: Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is not a novel about the Vietnam War. It is a story about the soldiers and their experiences and emotions that are brought about from the war. O'Brien makes several statements about war through these dynamic characters. He shows the violent nature of soldiers under the pressures of war, he makes an effective antiwar statement, and he comments on the reversal …
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…grudging participants loathed the idea. Tim O'Brien very effectively portrays their hatred and the severe negative effects the war had on American soldiers in his excellent, convincing novel The Things They Carried. The skillful choice of details and several types of diction that reveal his theme of induced violence, his anti-war statement, and his view of the reversal of morals among GIs are effective in presenting O'Brien's views in this, "The Last War Novel"(McClung 96).